As Drexel’s year-long celebration of its 125th anniversary comes to a close, we leave you with some entertaining trivia about the Drexel family and the legacy institutions absorbed by the University over the generations.
If you’ve never watched the 1967 Disney film “The Happiest Millionaire,” it’s worth digging up. The forgotten musical comedy focuses on the family of University founder Anthony J. Drexel and the titular character is his grandson, Col. Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle Sr., an eccentric yet lovable member of the Philadelphia aristocracy who is played by Fred MacMurray, star of previous films like “The Absent-Minded Professor” and “Double Indemnity.” The famous Philadelphian is depicted as an idiosyncratic family man who spends his days teaching hand-to-hand combat and playing with his pet alligators (yes, plural). “The Happiest Millionaire” was adapted from the 1956 Broadway play of the same name, born out of the 1955 book “My Philadelphia Father,” written by Biddle’s daughter. Walt Disney turned the film, which was one of his favorites, into what he called a “happy family musical” after the success of “Mary Poppins.” It was the last movie he ever worked on before he died, making “The Happiest Millionaire” an important part of both Drexel and Disney history.
Part of the 1995 documentary “The Show” about the culture of hip hop was filmed at the Drexel Armory. It featured a 1994 concert on campus with Run DMC, Method Man, Wu-Tang Clan, Warren G, the Notorious B.I.G., Naughty by Nature and Snoop Dog. Over the years, other big acts that have played on campus include David Crosby, Flock of Seagulls, The Ramones, Nirvana, The Wallflowers, Violent Femmes and OK Go.
In 1934, Ernest Hemingway invited Charles Cadwalader, the president of the Academy of Natural Sciences (not then owned by Drexel University), and Henry Weed Fowler, an ichthyologist and the Academy’s first full-time curator of fish, to his house in Cuba for a fishing expedition of Atlantic billfish. What was supposed to be a one-off trip turned into a mutual collaboration: Hemingway used their experiences and Fowler’s knowledge when writing “The Old Man and the Sea” and Fowler found and named a spinycheek scorpionfish Neomerinthe hemingway in honor of the author. In 2014, Academy Senior Fellow Robert McCracken Peck visited Hemingway’s haunts in Cuba as part of an international celebration of the 60-year anniversary of Hemingway’s Nobel Prize for Literature.
Ian Fleming borrowed the name of his famous 007 spy “James Bond” — first appearing in his 1953 book “Casino Royale” — from a book about birds by an ornithologist named James Bond at the Academy of Natural Sciences.
In the same year that Anthony J. Drexel founded his university in 1891, his beloved niece, Katharine Drexel established the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, a religious congregation in nearby Bensalem. Her action was a shock to A.J. Drexel and to the whole world, because she was a famous heiress from one of Philadelphia’s most prominent families. Living on less than $1 a day, she spent the next six decades and an estimated $20 million building missions, schools and churches for Native Americans and African Americans. She also became the only nun to ever found a university: Xavier University of Louisiana, the only historically black college or university that is Catholic. After her death at age 96 in 1955, Katharine had two miracles ascribed to her, for healing the hearing of two children. When Pope John Paul II canonized her in 2000, over 200 members of the Drexel family attended the ceremony in Rome, including Cordelia Frances Biddle, whose great-grandmother was cousins with Saint Katharine. Biddle, who teaches creative writing courses in the Pennoni Honors College, was so inspired by that day’s events that she wrote a book about her distant relative called “Saint Katharine: The Life of Katharine Drexel.”
In the late 1800s, Harriet Cole was a maid employed at Hahnemann Medical College, which is today part of Drexel’s College of Medicine, and she willed her body to the institution just before her untimely death from tuberculosis at age 35. Her sacrifice can still be appreciated today at Drexel’s Queen Lane Campus, where since 2007 her cadaver has greeted current medical students from inside a glass display outside the bookstore in the Student Activities Center. As the story goes, Cole spent her days cleaning the room where Rufus Weaver, professor of anatomy, dissected cadavers with his medical students. Having much respect for Weaver’s work, Cole requested that he use her body after her death to benefit science. In 1887, Weaver proceeded with a medical “first” — the complete dissection and mounting of Cole’s entire nervous system, a process that took over five months.
Which Drexel family member is the subject of a Walt Disney film?
If you’ve never watched the 1967 Disney film “The Happiest Millionaire,” it’s worth digging up. The forgotten musical comedy focuses on the family of University founder Anthony J. Drexel and the titular character is his grandson, Col. Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle Sr., an eccentric yet lovable member of the Philadelphia aristocracy who is played by Fred MacMurray, star of previous films like “The Absent-Minded Professor” and “Double Indemnity.” The famous Philadelphian is depicted as an idiosyncratic family man who spends his days teaching hand-to-hand combat and playing with his pet alligators (yes, plural). “The Happiest Millionaire” was adapted from the 1956 Broadway play of the same name, born out of the 1955 book “My Philadelphia Father,” written by Biddle’s daughter. Walt Disney turned the film, which was one of his favorites, into what he called a “happy family musical” after the success of “Mary Poppins.” It was the last movie he ever worked on before he died, making “The Happiest Millionaire” an important part of both Drexel and Disney history.
What 1995 hip-hop documentary was filmed on campus?
Part of the 1995 documentary “The Show” about the culture of hip hop was filmed at the Drexel Armory. It featured a 1994 concert on campus with Run DMC, Method Man, Wu-Tang Clan, Warren G, the Notorious B.I.G., Naughty by Nature and Snoop Dog. Over the years, other big acts that have played on campus include David Crosby, Flock of Seagulls, The Ramones, Nirvana, The Wallflowers, Violent Femmes and OK Go.
Which famous author named a fish in the Academy of Natural Science’s collection?
In 1934, Ernest Hemingway invited Charles Cadwalader, the president of the Academy of Natural Sciences (not then owned by Drexel University), and Henry Weed Fowler, an ichthyologist and the Academy’s first full-time curator of fish, to his house in Cuba for a fishing expedition of Atlantic billfish. What was supposed to be a one-off trip turned into a mutual collaboration: Hemingway used their experiences and Fowler’s knowledge when writing “The Old Man and the Sea” and Fowler found and named a spinycheek scorpionfish Neomerinthe hemingway in honor of the author. In 2014, Academy Senior Fellow Robert McCracken Peck visited Hemingway’s haunts in Cuba as part of an international celebration of the 60-year anniversary of Hemingway’s Nobel Prize for Literature.
What famous fictional spy was named after a real-life Academy scientist?
Ian Fleming borrowed the name of his famous 007 spy “James Bond” — first appearing in his 1953 book “Casino Royale” — from a book about birds by an ornithologist named James Bond at the Academy of Natural Sciences.
What does the world’s wealthiest nun have in common with Drexel?
In the same year that Anthony J. Drexel founded his university in 1891, his beloved niece, Katharine Drexel established the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, a religious congregation in nearby Bensalem. Her action was a shock to A.J. Drexel and to the whole world, because she was a famous heiress from one of Philadelphia’s most prominent families. Living on less than $1 a day, she spent the next six decades and an estimated $20 million building missions, schools and churches for Native Americans and African Americans. She also became the only nun to ever found a university: Xavier University of Louisiana, the only historically black college or university that is Catholic. After her death at age 96 in 1955, Katharine had two miracles ascribed to her, for healing the hearing of two children. When Pope John Paul II canonized her in 2000, over 200 members of the Drexel family attended the ceremony in Rome, including Cordelia Frances Biddle, whose great-grandmother was cousins with Saint Katharine. Biddle, who teaches creative writing courses in the Pennoni Honors College, was so inspired by that day’s events that she wrote a book about her distant relative called “Saint Katharine: The Life of Katharine Drexel.”
Who will forever be Drexel’s longest-serving employee?
In the late 1800s, Harriet Cole was a maid employed at Hahnemann Medical College, which is today part of Drexel’s College of Medicine, and she willed her body to the institution just before her untimely death from tuberculosis at age 35. Her sacrifice can still be appreciated today at Drexel’s Queen Lane Campus, where since 2007 her cadaver has greeted current medical students from inside a glass display outside the bookstore in the Student Activities Center. As the story goes, Cole spent her days cleaning the room where Rufus Weaver, professor of anatomy, dissected cadavers with his medical students. Having much respect for Weaver’s work, Cole requested that he use her body after her death to benefit science. In 1887, Weaver proceeded with a medical “first” — the complete dissection and mounting of Cole’s entire nervous system, a process that took over five months.